“I was doing a live link with Rachel last April or May, when it was well known that she was leaving Five Seven Live,” says Wilson, “and I asked her who was looking for her job. We talked about a variety of names and I said, ‘Jesus, Rachel, there should be a woman doing it. Why don’t we start a rumour and say I’m interested?’ And that was it, we went on with the interview. I hadn’t thought about moving at that stage, because I was happy with what I was doing.
“But I put the phone down and it was one of those moments where I thought, of course I should be interested. I love radio and I’ve always wanted to present. So I sent off an e-mail and it went from there. It was literally as simple as that, where it started out as a jokey conversation to going, yeah, I should be looking for that.”
Though it began on a whim, since making her mind up, Wilson has not only become English’s successor as the main anchor of Drivetime, RTE Radio 1’s new early-evening package, but finds herself at the forefront of change at the troubled broadcaster. Unfairly or not, as Wilson prepares to host her inaugural edition of Drivetime on Monday with co-presenters Dave Fanning and Des Cahill, she is the most prominent new face in an autumn schedule designed to showcase the transformation supposedly wrought by Ana Leddy, head of Radio 1.
Bringing in Wilson from the newsroom to front one of Radio 1’s flagship slots was not only a surprise move but a smart one. The Tipperary-born reporter boasts both impressive experience and audience recognition — she has been RTE’s legal-affairs correspondent for the past decade — while remaining enough of an unknown quantity to pique listener interest. And if Wilson’s co-hosts are hardly fresh faces, they nevertheless bring something new to the table.
The affable Fanning arrives from 2FM to cover cultural matters, while the reliable Cahill will oversee an overdue expansion of sports coverage. On the face to it, Drivetime appears well equipped not only to bring a fresh approach to an extended time slot, but also to meet the rising challenge of competitors on Today FM and NewsTalk 106.
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However, the revamped slot may not herald the new era of dynamism and innovation that the Montrose management are aiming for. Wilson, Fanning and Cahill are a potentially fizzy partnership of empathetic yet diverse personalities, but the show faces substantial obstacles, several of them, ironically, produced by the new regime.
For one thing, the programme’s format does not allow much opportunity for the trio to bounce off each other. Instead, they will host their own segments over a three-hour period: Wilson covering news and current affairs from 5pm, Cahill handling sport from 6.30pm (though he will drop in during the earlier slot) and Fanning concentrating on music and film after 7pm.
Its remit was further muddied by the rash suggestion from Adrian Moynes, the head of RTE radio, that Fanning could cover highbrow areas such as sculpture that formed part of Rattlebag’s beat before it was axed.
Other calculations defined Drivetime’s shape, such as incorporating the disparate elements under one banner in response to audience wishes. “RTE’s research suggests that this is what the public wanted: there is a demand for more sport in Drivetime to lighten it up and vary it a bit,” says Cahill. But the end product looks less like a fresh new programme and more like a clunky, overly compartmentalised rehash of existing formats.
“It’s three completely different things,” admits Fanning. “To be honest, the audience (Cahill) will hand to me will be tough for me in some ways, because coming from a half- hour of sports won’t be easy. I’m supposed to be doing the last programme of daytime, but I’m not fooling myself that it’s not going to be the first programme of night-time. That will mean you’re not going to get the hugest audience for what you do, because it’s just the nature of night-time. But I’ve always been on the margins.”
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While Fanning’s assessment of his slot may be cheerfully honest, the RTE hierarchy is unlikely to view Drivetime as a marginal enterprise. Having proved adept at dropping shows and axing presenters such as Val Joyce, Myles Dungan and John Kelly, Radio 1’s management has to prove it can deliver the goods in one of the station’s key battlegrounds. The early-evening slot has come under pressure as commercial radio has flourished; the latest JNLR listenership figures show increases for competing shows such as Today FM’s Matt Cooper and NewsTalk’s George Hook.
But in Wilson, Leddy has landed a formidable figure, a seasoned reporter who held her own in the pressured environment of the courts. When faced with responding to the “macho or sporty thing” of her competitors, she prefers to focus on her own strengths.
“We’re current affairs and news,” Wilson says. “Within those parameters, we’re not going to do song and dance with it. I think people like their news straight up, straightforward. After that, I suppose it’s about the style of presentation: I’ll be different to Rachel and I’ll be different to Matt Cooper and George Hook.”
What that style will be remains to be seen. For all her visibility in the RTE newsroom, Wilson saw her role as an observant reporter rather than a camera-hogging personality, “a conduit of information for the public”. She has also devoted herself to pursuing the journalistic path: “I was the child who never wanted to be anything else. I don’t know why, it may have been that I just wanted to be different.”
After studying journalism at Rathmines College of Commerce in the late 1970s (where Cahill was a contemporary), she worked in provincial newspapers before arriving at RTE in the late 1980s. But it was her appointment to the legal-affairs brief 10 years ago that allowed Wilson to bloom professionally: “It gave me a ringside seat on the most amazing stories and the opportunities that came with the job were terrific.”
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Although she happily describes herself as “ambitious”, she is uncomfortable with some aspects of her new role. Not so much the strained atmosphere that reportedly prevails in much of Montrose’s radio centre — “Whatever difficulties some may have had, I sympathise with people, but I wasn’t part of it, so hopefully I come to it with no baggage,” says Wilson — but rather the personality-driven world in which she now finds herself.
“I think you can choose the way you want to be perceived,” she says. “I’m a serious news journalist and that’s what I will continue doing. I’m not trying to be something else. But I don’t intend to bring my life into the programme. I won’t be telling you what I did at the weekend. Having said that, of course, I do what most people do: take the kids to school, do the shopping, go out the odd night for a bit of fun, go to the theatre. So you bring all that to bear on the stories and interviews you do, your awareness of life.”
Such sentiments are noble, but possibly a hindrance for a presenter in a crowded market. It may well be that what Cahill, a longtime friend, calls Wilson’s “very good, warm personality” will shine through as she settles into her role.
But by naming the readily familiar stalwarts of Fanning and Cahill as her co- presenters, RTE bosses are clearly taking no chances in terms of populist appeal. In the process, they have sacrificed the idea of Drivetime being innovative.
Cahill seems the safest bet: his cheery sports bulletins on Morning Ireland and Pat Kenny, not to mention his television forays and weekly phone-in shows, have made him a recognisable figure. Giving him his own slot seems like a logical move on a channel that has lacked a dedicated sports show: “RTE has a good sports staff, but you’re only as strong as the outlets you have,” Cahill says, though he admits the show is not a huge change for him.
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Nor will Drivetime mark a big upheaval for Fanning, at least if the veteran broadcaster has anything to with it. Despite taking up a broader cultural brief, he has modest aims for his new slot. “People have mentioned Radio 1 to me for various reasons down the years, but I’ve never had any aspirations,” Fanning says. “It’s a new challenge of taking what I do on 2FM, modifying it a bit and bringing it over to Radio 1.”
Given his description of 2FM as “100% my spiritual home” and his penchant for pop culture, it is hardly surprising that Fanning does not sees himself as being in the vanguard of Radio 1’s eviscerated arts coverage.
“I do resent the tag of dumbing-down, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I have certain interests that are my life: music, movies and even soccer. And I have the same disinterest in certain things: I’m just not interested in theatre or ceramics or whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. That doesn’t mean I won’t cover it — I’ve covered Big Brother and I can’t stand that.”
With Cahill and Fanning covering familiar beats, it falls to Wilson to provide the novelty factor. Whether her unvarnished approach to news reporting can succeed or whether she will develop a more self- opinionated style remains to be seen. But Wilson seems unconcerned at being a fresh voice for Radio 1 — she wants her work to do the talking.
“I’m hoping that my skin is thick enough at this stage not to be nervous,” she says. “I’m all in favour of criticism; I’m a new presenter, I’ve got to bed in. There’ll be things I’ll do wrong, mannerisms that people will or will not like, so it will take a few months.
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“And I want more people to listen, but I’m not going to stress over JNLR figures coming up. That comes with the territory. We must be mad to put ourselves out there, but we do. Some challenge comes along and we do it.”
Drivetime, RTE Radio 2, Mon-Fri 5pm